Jane Dornacker was a U.S. Postal worker turned comedienne and musician. She was a member of the bands The Tubes and Leila and the Snakes. In the 1980s she turned from comedy and music to playing music and doing traffic reports on radio stations in San Francisco and New York City. She also had a featured role in the motion picture L'étoffe des héros (1983) as Nurse Murch.
On October 22, 1986 Jane Dornacker was killed while doing a traffic report on WNBC-AM in New York City. Much to the horror and dismay of radio host Joey Reynolds and the millions of WNBC-AM listeners who heard the terrified voice of Jane Dornacker screaming "Hit the water! Hit the water! Hit the water!" as the helicopter from which she and pilot Bill Pate were reporting, fell from the sky and crashed into the Hudson River. A very shaken Joey Reynolds searched for the right words to say in the tense moments after the transmission breaks off. She died on arrival to Saint Vincent's Hospital. Jane Dornacker was 38 years old.
